


sift through the ash

by against_stars



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Illegal Apostate Road Trip, Tranquility
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-27
Updated: 2016-03-27
Packaged: 2018-05-29 13:18:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6376354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/against_stars/pseuds/against_stars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>9:29 Dragon. Jowan is made Tranquil under suspicion of blood magic long before Lily can uncover the evidence of the accusation. Devastated, she turns to Amell and Surana for any help they can offer; unwilling to let their friend endure the fate he had feared so much, they conclude the four of them have only one course of action:<br/><br/>Flee the tower. Find the cure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sift through the ash

By Thursday, it's been two days since Cosette Amell has seen her best friend.

According to the apprentices in the boy's quarters, they just woke up one day to find Jowan's bed empty. It wasn't a strange sight, since that's what happens when an apprentice is called for their Harrowing, but he hasn't yet turned up in the mage's quarters, either. So something must have happened during the ritual.

It's frustrating, but not surprising, that none of the older mages will tell her what's involved in a Harrowing, no matter how many favors she offers in return. Enchanter Leorah eventually pulls her aside to scold her for pestering people about it, knowing full well it's a strict Circle secret and anyone who did tell her would be severely punished for doing so.

"What are you so concerned about anyway, girl?" Enchanter Leorah asks dryly. "You're nineteen. There's no danger of getting called for your Harrowing anytime soon."

Unrepentant in the least, Cosette merely alters her line of questioning. The details of a Harrowing are secret, but surely no one swears an oath to hide what happens after, once it's over and done with.

By Saturday, it's been four days since Cosette has seen Jowan, and according to the information she's gathered from the mages still willing to answer her questions, whatever happens during a Harrowing results in some recovery time, which seems to average between two and four days of isolated rest. No one she speaks to indicates that it's ever needed longer than a week for anyone to get back on their feet.

She's asked most of the younger Harrowed mages and many of the older ones; a handful of Enchanters still willing to indulge her and a couple of Enchanters that aren't but put up with her because they know she's one of First Enchanter Irving's favorites (and she sweetly offers to put in a good word for them the next time he talks to her); and even a few Templars, though not many.

She hopes she might get something useful out of Cullen, but she doesn't really expect it. Cullen Rutherford is a Templar barely her own age, one of the youngest in the Tower and anxious with the fact of it. He has such a strong crush on her friend Surana that he goes red at the ears any time he sees Cosette even if Surana isn't with her, as if he's nervous that her friend might be just around the corner.

But as she expects, he doesn't have anything to offer her either. When she asks him about Jowan, he swallows nervously and tells her he has nothing to say, looking like he might vibrate into pieces and fly apart if she presses the issue. Poor lamb.

Even Surana doesn't have any real answers for her, looking annoyed when she clings like a limpet and finally snapping that Harrowed mages aren't allowed to discuss anything about the ritual and she'd better get to class before someone sends her to Irving for skipping out again. Cosette is pretty sure she sees a little concern in Surana's eyes, though. They were both Jowan's friends when Surana was still an apprentice.

By Friday next, Cosette is officially concerned. She's spent the week hoping that Jowan really had been Harrowed, that he’s just been recovering from whatever happened during the ritual and that he’d eventually be moved to the mages floor, but the mages never admit to having seen him in their quarters no matter how many times she asks, and the Enchanters are each useless and tight-lipped in turn.

Could he have been transferred? Would they really do that without letting him say goodbye? And would the Enchanters hide it from her for this long? Transfers aren't regular, but they're not uncommon, and there wouldn't be any reason for anyone to hide it from her. The only other thing she can think of that would inspire such secrecy would be if Jowan had escaped — there's one older mage, Anders, who runs away all the time, and even though it's useless to pretend otherwise the Enchanters still typically act like it's impossible every time until he winds up dragged back. But Jowan wouldn't have escaped without at least saying farewell.

The alternative —

Sometimes mages disappear, and afterwards Templars guard the halls with freshly oiled swords and gleaming clean shields and a hard look in their eyes when apprentices pass. Cots are stripped and put in storage, or the mattress turned over and dressed with clean sheets for an incoming student. Storage chests are cleared of study guides and scrolls of notes, emptied of books to be sent back to the library.

Unthinkable.

When she’s not investigating or in class, Cosette spends the whole week more in the library than anywhere else, withdrawn and confused. She buries herself in the bookshelves, shutting out anything that isn't her studies to distract her from her concern. Perhaps she'll demand to be Harrowed early, so she can figure out what could have happened to Jowan.

It's not uncommon for her to fall asleep in the library long enough that someone is sent to wake her up and bring her back to the apprentice dorms after lights out. Curfew tends to be more of a gentle suggestion than a firm rule for her, after the first few times of being dragged into First Enchanter Irving's office by an irate Templar only for her to sheepishly admit she'd gotten caught up in another dusty old tome, and by now she knows she's something of a mild exasperation among the Templars and Enchanters who have to go hunting among bookshelves for her before they can lock the apprentice dorms for the night.

What is strange is that tonight it's a Chantry sister doing the waking, more roughly than Cosette has been handled in quite some time.

"Apprentice Amell!" the sister hisses, and Cosette blinks owlishly up at her, head reeling from having gone from horizontal on the pages of a book to vertical and jerked around, and crankiness quickly starts replacing grogginess.

"Yes, I know," she says, trying to shrug off the grip on her shoulder. "Out of bounds after hours, I'm going." She starts groping around the table for something to mark her place in the tome, because it's very large with very thin pages and if she loses her spot it'll take forever to find again. It's supposedly the "Complete Geography of Thedas," which is something of a misnomer, truth be told, since like all other maps of Thedas it goes no further south than the Korcari Wilds and no further north than "Par Vollen exists", but it goes much further into depth of each known region than most other geography books, and Cosette has spent four hours nose-deep in it and could happily spend another eight more.

The sister releases Cosette immediately, wringing her hands together so violently Cosette thinks perhaps the poor woman couldn't have helped the brusque way she grabbed her. Her expression is twisted in distress, and in the blue glow of Cosette's reading-light wisps, tear tracks shine on her cheeks.

It seems an unnecessarily dramatic reaction. Did someone send her up to find Cosette and fail to tell her she was harmless? It wouldn't be the first time someone had made up some kind of awful-sounding hazing ritual as a practical joke, admittedly. Go through the tower at night and wake up the sleeping witch, or something.

"Maker's teeth, Sister, it's alright," Cosette says with exasperation, giving up on finding a bookmark and closing the tome around her first finger to keep her place until she could get it back to her dorm, "I said I'm going."

The sister covers her mouth with her hands and lets out an alarming sob. "Oh, don't speak of the Maker, not now."

With a mournful little thought for her lost place among the thin pages, Cosette drops the tome entirely and reaches up to touch the woman's hitching shoulders, concerned and somewhat uncomfortable with the display. "Er, is everything alright, Sister?"

The other woman shakes her head violently, but the question seems to snap her attention back to Cosette. "No. But you must come with me. Jowan told me you'd be here, you need to follow me."

"Jowan?" Cosette repeats, surprised and more than a little pleased. "You know where he is?"

"Please," the sister says, tugging Cosette's arm towards the door. Bewildered, Cosette dispels her light wisps and grabs the tome off the table as she allows herself to be herded out of the library.

The sister scrubs at her face until the red rims of her eyes are the only evidence of her unhappiness, and nods dismissively at the night shift Templars they pass on their dizzy way through the winding halls — no one stops her, because unlike the mages of the tower, members of the Chantry can go where they please, when they please. One never knows when someone might call for confession, or something.

They don't speak as Cosette follows her down three, four, five floors, past the apprentice dorms, all the way to one of the lower stockroom doors. The sister gestures towards the handle, eyes welling up again.

Nervous, Cosette presses down on the latch until it clicks, then tugs the heavy door open, peering carefully inside.

Immediately Cosette is struck by how unusually still Jowan is, sitting slumped forward a little on a storage crate of potions vials, head bowed, his sharp profile lit by one flickering candle.

Ever since they were children, for as long as Cosette can remember being in the Circle, the pair of them have always been snapped at to stop fidgeting all over the place — in class, in the dining hall, those few years when apprentices were still allowed to play outdoors before one of the older mages took a swim in the lake and didn't came back.

Cosette knows how to control herself now, to a degree, but Jowan has always been given to bouncing his leg or fiddling with his sleeves. The exasperation on their teachers' faces always make them giggle, when they stop clicking their feet on the floor and grant a moment of silence, only to immediately start tapping the desk with their fingertips.

Jowan stands from the crate and turns to face her, every movement perfectly controlled, and Cosette practically throws herself backward, all the breath punched out of her in a moment. His blank expression carves a belly-wound straight through her. A Chantry starburst stands out above his level brows, red and raised, still fresh on his skin. Only just beginning to heal.

"Please do not be startled, Apprentice Amell," Jowan says neutrally, as if Cosette could be anything else, while Cosette digs the ball of her palm against her open mouth in ill, churning horror. "I understand you may find my current state alarming. It is unnecessary."

-

Officially, lecture attendance is no longer compulsory for Harrowed mages. Their studies have paid off, their skills have proven stable, and they are, technically, success stories. Instead of classes, full mages are encouraged to take up independent research, the idea being that it will enable them to move up in the Circle and support their bid for a position as Enchanter, or that their research will provide an interesting breakthrough or unique insight that will bring funds and praise to the Circle that educated them, or, for the particularly ambitious, to gain the attention of a wealthy noble who might grant them patronage to continue the exploration of their field outside of the Circle itself.

Unofficially, the concern is that mages might otherwise spend their post-Harrowing years becoming idle and inactive, that left to their own devices a mage might find less productive and more dangerous outlets for their restlessness. No one wants a mage to grow bitter, steeped for years in the boredom and seclusion of the Circle. That's how troublemakers are made.

When Enver Surana was first brought to the Circle, the Senior Enchanter who was writing down his information for the records asked where he was from. Enver said, "Denerim. The alienage," and the Enchanter had paused his writing, glanced at Enver's tapering ears, then looked him in the eyes and asked him disdainfully if he even knew how to read.

He doesn't need to be idle to be bitter. He can fucking multitask.

Nevertheless, Enver does still attend a few classes and lectures. He doesn't need to put any more weight on the troublemaker side of the scales; getting into fistfights with other apprentices and the occasional Templar recruit in the corridors has that already pretty much set in stone for him. For the most part, his academic successes that enable him to get away with that, and there's no use fucking up a perfectly good arrangement. Going to a few advanced and intermediate classes, even in school of magic that he doesn't specialize in, is an easy way to look good when he's not actively writing his own paper.

Sometimes he just picks a classroom and stays in it all day, doing his research on and off, and sometimes he only sticks around for studies he's familiar enough with that he can tune them out and use them as background noise while he reads. Today he's doing the latter, with the plan to follow up in the library for the rest of the day.

He slides out of intermediate Primal with the rest of the mid-level apprentices and makes a sharp turn to head up to the library on the next floor up, the little flood of teenagers parting easily around him.

Mentally composing a list of the books he'll need to request, he nearly misses the sound of someone calling out.

"A-Apprentice Amell!"

Well, plans change. He spins on his heel and immediately makes his way back through the crowd and down the hall, towards the familiar voice.

"Oh — Hello, Cullen."

"I'm glad I, uh, caught you. Have you — I mean, do you —"

"I'm sorry...?"

Enver is already rounding the corner by the time Rutherford manages to blurt out, "Are you feeling at all poorly, Apprentice Amell? That is, I've just noticed that you've been looking rather unwell, and if you're feeling ill I'd be happy to escort you to one of the Senior Enchanters for a potion..."

The Templar trails off, his awkward eager smile sliding woodenly off his face as Enver approaches.

He'll give the Templar this much, he's not unobservant — Amell really does look like she hasn't slept in a week. Faint circles are beginning to show under her eyes, and her lips are nearly bloodless in her pale face. She didn't look this bad when he'd seen her a week ago, when she was nagging everyone in the tower about trying to find Jowan.

If Rutherford was any other Templar, Enver would think he was trying to get her alone so he could test her, see if she's possessed, maybe score some points with the Knight-Commander for weeding out a bad one. Not this one, though.

Rutherford was assigned to this tower a year ago, and Enver has seen his gaze linger on Amell since the beginning. When he was assigned to guard the library floor his eyes would wander if Amell came in to study, and when he was assigned to watch the classes he would always stare when Amell was casting.

Catching a Templar's attention rarely works out well for a mage, whatever kind of attention it is.

Enver spent the first few months of Rutherford's time in Kinloch Hold making damned sure he slipped himself into every idle conversation between them he could catch, so the baby tin can would know that someone would notice if he tried anything. He didn't seem to intend to, though. Mostly he just hung around and looked at her.

If Amell had ever indicated she felt similarly, Enver wouldn't have put so much effort into redirecting Rutherford's attention — he might have no interest in fucking any of their jailors, and the concept disgusted him, but who was he to tell someone who to mess around with when they were all stuck in this place? He always does his best to step in and act as a witness and support when it seemed like a Templar was getting too familiar, but sometimes the looks weren't unwanted, and he didn't waste his time trying to come between anyone who wanted to make their own mistakes. But Amell had never so much as looked twice at the man when he wasn't directly in front of her.

It's alienage tactics, really. Kids looked out for one another, stayed in groups, watched each other's backs. Even if he knew early not to expect the same kind of unity as a knife-ear among shemlen, it's a hard habit to break. It's worked out well enough anyway.

Of course, Amell doesn't get to be Irving's clever favorite by being stupid. She's seen the man's ears go red when he talks to her, she's heard him to stammer his way through small talk after breakfast, but Enver making sure to put himself in the area always has Rutherford stumbling away from a conversation with her, nervous to be seen as behaving inappropriately — it has the hilarious result of Amell believing that Rutherford's awkward responses are due to Enver's presence itself.

Now even if Enver isn't around, she thinks Rutherford expects him to be wherever she herself was (which, admittedly, isn't wrong,) and chalks the Templar's fumbling reaction up to being nervous that his 'crush' might walk up beside Amell at any time.

As the elven aunties in Denerim would have said: Bless her heart.

"Hey, Cullen," Enver greets, falsely bright. The Templar looks like he's barely restraining himself from flinging himself backwards as if he could phase through the wall and flee. "Amell, there you are, I was just looking for you. Torrin's looking like he might start class early, so we'd better get going."

"You don't attend class anymore," Rutherford says doubtfully, working through his nervousness enough to frown at him, "you're Harrowed."

"I _am_ , aren't I," says Enver with a smile, brimming with modesty. "But I've still got a research proposal to write, and classrooms are so much better for my concentration."

Between them, Amell looks as insubstantial as smoke, and Enver spares a moment to think he may need to be seriously concerned about what she might have found out trying to look for Jowan. "I'll get you a potion if you need it, but we should get back to the hall," he tells her, actually meaning it.

"I don't need anything," she says, sounding distant, as if she's looking straight through the both of them. With a polite goodbye to the Templar, Amell drifts into the lecture hall behind Enver, taking a seat in the back of the hall as opposed to her usual front row.

Enver pulls out the research material he has on hand and arranges it over his own back desk, resolving to just work out as much as he can while he has the time before he gets the books he intended to use. The Senior Enchanter in front shuffles his own papers, and begins to drone through his lecture.

"We've touched a little bit on how the different schools of magic balance one another, but today we're going to go further into that. Primarily, we will be looking at the bridge between the Creation school and the Entropy school — or Negation, as it is sometimes called. Essentially, what one does, the other can undo — or redo, as the case may be."

Enver rolls his eyes and tunes the lecture out entirely, the classroom filling with white noise as he sifts through his notes.

An hour into the class, there's the enormous scrape and clatter of a chair being shoved backwards so sharply it flips right onto the floor.

Every head turns sharply towards the epicenter of the disruption, and Amell is standing straight up at her desk, hands splayed on the surface, pressing so hard against it that the edges white out and her arms tremble.

"Negation!" she shouts, nonsenically. The Enchanter looks enormously startled.

"What —" he starts.

She points a finger at him emphatically, eyes wild. "Balances! If it can be done, it can be undone! If it can be severed, it can be _remade_!"

Without another meaningless word, Amell bolts from the hall, the door slamming shut behind her, footsteps echoing against the stone until they vanish.

"Well," Torrin harrumphs, "if anyone _else_ has a fit they'd like to throw before I continue?"

The other apprentices are silent in their collective confusion, and after a few moments the class simply carries on, the ripples left in the wake of Amell's sudden flight smoothing out until there's nothing to indicate it had even happened.

Five minutes later, Enver gathers his things and slips out into the hall himself, much more quietly.

He finds her in one of the upper floor libraries, one that's rarely used for how many inconvenient flights of stairs it takes to reach it. She still looks as wild as she did in the classroom, bent over a table stacked high with dusty tomes, flicking rapidly through the yellowing pages of what looks from Enver's position over her shoulder to be a compendium of different functions of lyrium.

"You're gonna get hit with a Silence if you run around shouting at Enchanters, princess," he says dryly. "They're not fun."

It either says something terrible about his ability to be sneaky or something unnerving about her complete focus on the book in front of her that she doesn't so much as flinch at the sudden sound of his voice in the quiet room.

"Hey," he says, stepping forward. He nearly jerks back again when she slams the book shut and sweeps it aside, wrenching another from the top of a pile at her elbow and ripping it open. " _Hey_ ," he says again, more emphatically. Her shoulders are hunched up around her ears, and he reaches out and grabs one, spinning her around.

"Jowan's _Tranquil_ ," Amell hisses.

Enver does jerk away this time, but he's more disappointed than shocked at the admission. He hasn't let himself think it, but the idea has been lurking in the back of his mind ever since Amell started on her search for the other apprentice. There's only one real reason for an apprentice to just up and vanish in the middle of the night, and only three outcomes.

He's never been as close to Jowan as Amell is, though he's known him longer. But he and Amell were thick as thieves, probably because Jowan was easily biddable and Amell came to Kinloch Hold as spoiled as you please. Of course she's going to take it this hard.

"Shit," he blows out under his breath, "princess, I'm so s—"

"No," she cuts him off sharply, "don't! Listen," and she curls her fingers in the front of his robes and shakes them, as if to make him pay closer attention than he already is, three inches from his face and staring, "what the Senior Enchanter was talking about — balances and bridges, nature evening out, we can _do that_. That can be _done_. If something can happen, we can make it _unhappen_. You have to help us, Surana!"

Enver stares blankly at her, absolutely refusing to follow where he's actually pretty sure he knows she's trying to go. "You can't be serious," he scoffs. "What are you talking about?"

"Tranquility," she whispers, voice dropping low so the lone Templar half-heartedly guarding the nearly abandoned floor can't possibly overhear her. "They cut Jowan's connection to the Fade, but if it's something that can be cut, then it's something that can be _remade_. We can figure out how."

Amell's eyes are huge and piercing. "I'm going to fix him," she breathes, barely audible, "I'm going to save him. I'm going to _cure Tranquility_."

**Author's Note:**

> [nicholas cage voice] im gonna steal the rite of tranquility
> 
> HELLO HELLO HELLO I'm taking a big step with this! A multi-part story! This is a journey into untested waters for me, I hope you have as much fun as I do.
> 
> come hang out with me [on tumblr](http://against-stars.tumblr.com), it's mostly Dragon Age and me rambling or doodling my silly OCs.


End file.
